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Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House
From the acclaimed author and columnist: a laugh-out-loud journey into the world of real estate—the true story of one woman’s “imperfect life lived among imperfect houses” and her quest for the four perfect walls to call home.
After an itinerant suburban childhood and countless moves as a grown-up—from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska; from the Midwest to the West Coast and back—Meghan Daum was living in Los Angeles, single and in her mid-thirties, and devoting obscene amounts of time not to her writing career or her dating life but to the pursuit of property: scouring Craigslist, visiting open houses, fantasizing about finding the right place for the right price. Finally, near the height of the real estate bubble, she succumbed, depleting her life’s savings to buy a 900-square-foot bungalow, with a garage that “bore a close resemblance to the ruins of Pompeii” and plumbing that “dated back to the Coolidge administration.”
From her mother’s decorating manias to her own “hidden room” dreams, Daum explores the perils and pleasures of believing that only a house can make you whole. With delicious wit and a keen eye for the absurd, she has given us a pitch-perfect, irresistible tale of playing a lifelong game of house.
After an itinerant suburban childhood and countless moves as a grown-up—from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska; from the Midwest to the West Coast and back—Meghan Daum was living in Los Angeles, single and in her mid-thirties, and devoting obscene amounts of time not to her writing career or her dating life but to the pursuit of property: scouring Craigslist, visiting open houses, fantasizing about finding the right place for the right price. Finally, near the height of the real estate bubble, she succumbed, depleting her life’s savings to buy a 900-square-foot bungalow, with a garage that “bore a close resemblance to the ruins of Pompeii” and plumbing that “dated back to the Coolidge administration.”
From her mother’s decorating manias to her own “hidden room” dreams, Daum explores the perils and pleasures of believing that only a house can make you whole. With delicious wit and a keen eye for the absurd, she has given us a pitch-perfect, irresistible tale of playing a lifelong game of house.
245 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
129 people are currently reading
1723 people want to read
About the author
Meghan Daum
17 books434 followersMeghan Daum is the author of Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House, a personal chronicle of real estate addiction and obsessive fascination with houses, as well as the novel The Quality of Life Report and the essay collection My Misspent Youth. Since 2005 she has written a weekly column for The Los Angeles Times, which appears on the op-ed page every Thursday. She has contributed to public radio's Morning Edition, Marketplace and This American Life and has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, Vogue, Self, New York, Travel & Leisure, BlackBook, Harper's Bazaar, The Village Voice, and The New York Times Book Review.
Equal parts reporter, storyteller, and satirist, Meghan has inspired controversy over a range of topics, including social politics, class warfare and the semiotics of shag carpet. She has been widely praised in the press and elicits particular enthusiasm from Amazon.com customer reviewers, who have hailed her work as everything from "brilliant and outrageously funny" to "obnoxious, arrogant, rambling dribble," (sic). Meghan's work is included in dozens of college textbooks and anthologies, including The KGB Bar Reader, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, and The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence.
Born in California in 1970, Meghan was raised primarily on the east coast and is a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA writing program at Columbia University's School of the Arts. She spent several years in New York City before making her now-infamous move to Nebraska in 1999, where she continued to work as an essayist and journalist and wrote The Quality of Life Report. Meghan has taught at various institutions, including California Institute for the Arts, where she was a visiting artist in 2004 and taught graduate nonfiction writing. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Alan Zarembo, and their sheepdog, Rex
Equal parts reporter, storyteller, and satirist, Meghan has inspired controversy over a range of topics, including social politics, class warfare and the semiotics of shag carpet. She has been widely praised in the press and elicits particular enthusiasm from Amazon.com customer reviewers, who have hailed her work as everything from "brilliant and outrageously funny" to "obnoxious, arrogant, rambling dribble," (sic). Meghan's work is included in dozens of college textbooks and anthologies, including The KGB Bar Reader, Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times, and The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence.
Born in California in 1970, Meghan was raised primarily on the east coast and is a graduate of Vassar College and the MFA writing program at Columbia University's School of the Arts. She spent several years in New York City before making her now-infamous move to Nebraska in 1999, where she continued to work as an essayist and journalist and wrote The Quality of Life Report. Meghan has taught at various institutions, including California Institute for the Arts, where she was a visiting artist in 2004 and taught graduate nonfiction writing. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Alan Zarembo, and their sheepdog, Rex
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July 10, 2015
I picked up this book for the most prosaic and obvious of reasons. I too am a person who would like to own real estate (and have not been able to). I indulge in HGTV shows far more frequently than is probably productive (House Hunters International- can you turn away from someone buying a farm in France??? I cannot!). So I assumed that this would be something that I could identify and commiserate with.
And for some portion of the book, it was. She loved HGTV too and watched it even more than I did. She also spent her free hours combing zillow and mailing herself listings she could not possibly afford- decorating rooms that she didn't have and experiencing deep pangs of house envy while visiting friends or flipping through beautiful house type magazines.
But it was also more than this- a lot more. Some of it is that this reads like an autobiography. Her obsession with real estate and houses is such a big part of her life that she ends up giving us most of her life story in the process of telling us about the process of her growing preoccupation with houses. It's almost like she went so far with telling the information that she might as well tell us the rest of the story. Some of it is because we needed to understand her childhood and background and where her house and home obsession comes from. And that part of it is quite relatable- we hear a lot about the class envy of her parents, their constant moving throughout their lives and how each house represented a step along their journey towards forging their new, middle class/upper class intellectual identities. I definitely highlighted a few lines about her class envy and laughed more than a few times at her descriptions of some of her ridiculous undergrad exploits and her reasons behind moving seven times in four years. The depth of understanding that she's clearly worked to about her parents and especially her mother seems hard earned and highly engaged. And I've done exactly the sort of commitment-phobic "well, how about I live part of the time here and part of the time as this sort of person- and part of the time here and as this sort of person" sort of proposal because I couldn't bear to leave things behind our pass up opportunities. I also appreciated that she definitely didn't stint on items that might have made her look bad- she told a story about kicking out a roommate in college that made her look like an utter ass (though I suspect we all have more than one of those stories ourselves), in the service of truly getting across to us that it is a very true and deep obsession.
However. I was pretty over this around what my kindle told me was about 60% through. That was about where it started to wear on me- and it also started to be less about houses and more about the author's relationship and personal life. I skimmed the rest of it. I didn't think it needed to be there- it seemed to mistake itself for a true autobiography rather than a record of a passion. I didn't need the full narration- frankly, while I liked some aspects of the writer, I hadn't gotten attached to her to the point where I needed to hear about how she is splitting up place in the house with her boyfriend and then husband. Perhaps it might have been about fifty pages shorter so as to not get repetitive?
The author also displays some definitely narcissism and self involvement and more than a few times evinces a desire to impress us with things that have happened to her and how awesome she is. Some of the time she is aware of it, but she does keep doing it. It's an annoying character trait that may irritate some readers.
All in all, if you're feeling desperate for a house you can't have right now and also like some good character analysis, this is a good book to pick up. But stop about halfway through before you get sick of it.
And for some portion of the book, it was. She loved HGTV too and watched it even more than I did. She also spent her free hours combing zillow and mailing herself listings she could not possibly afford- decorating rooms that she didn't have and experiencing deep pangs of house envy while visiting friends or flipping through beautiful house type magazines.
But it was also more than this- a lot more. Some of it is that this reads like an autobiography. Her obsession with real estate and houses is such a big part of her life that she ends up giving us most of her life story in the process of telling us about the process of her growing preoccupation with houses. It's almost like she went so far with telling the information that she might as well tell us the rest of the story. Some of it is because we needed to understand her childhood and background and where her house and home obsession comes from. And that part of it is quite relatable- we hear a lot about the class envy of her parents, their constant moving throughout their lives and how each house represented a step along their journey towards forging their new, middle class/upper class intellectual identities. I definitely highlighted a few lines about her class envy and laughed more than a few times at her descriptions of some of her ridiculous undergrad exploits and her reasons behind moving seven times in four years. The depth of understanding that she's clearly worked to about her parents and especially her mother seems hard earned and highly engaged. And I've done exactly the sort of commitment-phobic "well, how about I live part of the time here and part of the time as this sort of person- and part of the time here and as this sort of person" sort of proposal because I couldn't bear to leave things behind our pass up opportunities. I also appreciated that she definitely didn't stint on items that might have made her look bad- she told a story about kicking out a roommate in college that made her look like an utter ass (though I suspect we all have more than one of those stories ourselves), in the service of truly getting across to us that it is a very true and deep obsession.
However. I was pretty over this around what my kindle told me was about 60% through. That was about where it started to wear on me- and it also started to be less about houses and more about the author's relationship and personal life. I skimmed the rest of it. I didn't think it needed to be there- it seemed to mistake itself for a true autobiography rather than a record of a passion. I didn't need the full narration- frankly, while I liked some aspects of the writer, I hadn't gotten attached to her to the point where I needed to hear about how she is splitting up place in the house with her boyfriend and then husband. Perhaps it might have been about fifty pages shorter so as to not get repetitive?
The author also displays some definitely narcissism and self involvement and more than a few times evinces a desire to impress us with things that have happened to her and how awesome she is. Some of the time she is aware of it, but she does keep doing it. It's an annoying character trait that may irritate some readers.
All in all, if you're feeling desperate for a house you can't have right now and also like some good character analysis, this is a good book to pick up. But stop about halfway through before you get sick of it.
January 30, 2011
I recently read an article that questioned the current trend of everyone penning a memoir. This book, to me, exemplified said trend. A memoir about real estate? I picked it up for the clever title, which now strikes me as the best thing about the book. It would have made a delightful magazine article. There were amusing passages, to be sure, and Daum is a competent writer but there's not enough here, or too much.
The author's endless fascination with her own reactions to parquet and hexagonal tiles was about as interesting as watching paint dry. A life less ordinary, it's not. There were enough interesting characters to keep me from tossing it back in the library bag unfinished, but I can't recommend it unless you have a deep and abiding interest in real estate. Which I have found I do not.
The author's endless fascination with her own reactions to parquet and hexagonal tiles was about as interesting as watching paint dry. A life less ordinary, it's not. There were enough interesting characters to keep me from tossing it back in the library bag unfinished, but I can't recommend it unless you have a deep and abiding interest in real estate. Which I have found I do not.
July 19, 2010
Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House is the funniest, wittiest book I have read in a very long time. Briskly entertaining and nearly pitch-perfect, Meghan Daum's memoir is the story of her decades-long obsession with unaffordable apartments in New York, unmanageable farms in Nebraska, and houses (suitable and un-) in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It is also the story of too many of us, people whose lives are defined by media-spun dreams of high-class, high-priced, high-maintenance houses that are projections of the selves we long to be and can never quite become. Unless, of course, we are able to find the perfect house, in which our lives would suddenly become perfect.
Daum's house-driven obsession begins in her childhood, with an "alarming fixation" on the pioneer fantasy houses of Little House on the Prairie, fueled by her parents' equally alarming obsession with New York. They don't live there, but they pretend that they do, to the point where her father (who writes musical jingles for a living) maintains a telephone line in a one-room office in Manhattan, which rings through to their suburban Ridgeway, New Jersey house. Her mother (who is driven to decorate the family home as a way of overcoming the "yokelness of her upbringing") tells Midwestern relatives that they live "in the city"—New York, of course. "Two-facedness," Daum says, was the "family crest" and the family weekend getaways are visits to "open houses," as her mother fantasizes about the life she might lead—the person she might be—if she lived in each house.
Daum's troubled relationships to place (her "lifelong housing neuroses") continue through her college years at Vassar (where she majors in English and minors in moving from one dorm room to another) and then through her relocation to New York, where, she believes, she will be able to "slough off" the residue of her mother's and father's disenchantments with who they are and become, finally and triumphantly, her own person, in her very own enchanted place. It doesn't quite work out that way, she discovers as she "rotates" through one roommate after another in an apartment on West 100th Street, then moves to her own apartment. And then—improbably, after writing and selling a novel about a girl who moves to a small town in the Midwest—she relocates again, this time, to Lincoln, NE, where she settles—improbably—on a farm. But (let me be brief here) when her novel is optioned for film, she moves to Los Angeles, accompanied by her large, yak-like sheepdog, Rex, her constant and uncomplaining companion in all her moves. Then back again to Nebraska, where she actually buys a farm, and then back to Los Angeles, where—
But really, you must read this to-and-fro story for yourself, because no summary of it could be nearly as funny as Daum's manic telling of the back-and-forthness of her life. She is at her wittiest when she is making wild (but compassionate) fun of herself and the transient habits which, she says, were her "default setting," and describing the frenzied bubble of the Los Angeles real estate markets of the early 2000s.
If the memoir were just the recitation of Daum's obsession, however, it would not be anything more than a highly entertaining read. What makes this memoir truly and intensely interesting is the writer's insight into her inherited house-habiting angst and her understanding that this desire is woven deeply through our transient culture, dating back (at least) to the constant movements of pioneer families like that of Pa and Ma Ingalls, of Little House fame. Daum is by nature and nurture fickle, she says, a "house slut" who passionately loves houses, lives in them briefly, and then leaves them for other houses, when all the time what she really wants, deeply and painfully, is the perfect home, where she could be perfectly and permanently housed. Such a place would, she writes, confer on her an "I.D. badge for adulthood, for personhood even. It was the only thing that would make me desirable, credible, even human."
Daum's candid description of herself could well be the description of a large segment of the American home-buying public, collectively united in the belief that the perfect house would confer upon them the perfect life. In the early years of this century, the real estate and finance industries conspired to hype this irrational, cultish belief, ratcheting up home prices until they soared into the stratosphere. Realtors and bankers were aided and abetted by the advertising and home decorating industries: "The Home & Garden TV cable channel," Daum writes, offered "a round-the-clock infusion of house porn for wretches like me." As a result, people in search of personhood found themselves in possession of million-dollar houses with adjustable-rate mortgages. These houses quickly sank underwater, leaving their buyers stranded, bankrupt, and (presumably) unpersoned.
Daum's story has a happier ending, for she manages at last to find an almost-suitable Los Angeles bungalow that she can almost afford, one that brings her real life and her ideal life together under one roof. Never mind that it costs nearly half a million dollars, or that the garage resembles the "ruins of Pompeii" and the plumbing was installed during the Coolidge administration. She buys (wisely, on a standard thirty-year mortgage) and begins to remodel. Two years into the process, she meets a man who amiably consents to help her shop for antique drawer-pulls on their first date and eventually becomes her roommate. Now married, she is again contemplating a move—this time, for reasons that have a lasting importance to both of them: "Because the house is not our house, it's my house. It may be my home, but it's not really our home."
This is a book about one woman's lifelong game of house, but it is about also our American obsession with houses, with the dream of owning something that will transform us into the persons we dream of becoming. But as Daum says, maybe owning the perfect house (which seems so difficult to so many) is actually easy, when the "hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life."
Daum's house-driven obsession begins in her childhood, with an "alarming fixation" on the pioneer fantasy houses of Little House on the Prairie, fueled by her parents' equally alarming obsession with New York. They don't live there, but they pretend that they do, to the point where her father (who writes musical jingles for a living) maintains a telephone line in a one-room office in Manhattan, which rings through to their suburban Ridgeway, New Jersey house. Her mother (who is driven to decorate the family home as a way of overcoming the "yokelness of her upbringing") tells Midwestern relatives that they live "in the city"—New York, of course. "Two-facedness," Daum says, was the "family crest" and the family weekend getaways are visits to "open houses," as her mother fantasizes about the life she might lead—the person she might be—if she lived in each house.
Daum's troubled relationships to place (her "lifelong housing neuroses") continue through her college years at Vassar (where she majors in English and minors in moving from one dorm room to another) and then through her relocation to New York, where, she believes, she will be able to "slough off" the residue of her mother's and father's disenchantments with who they are and become, finally and triumphantly, her own person, in her very own enchanted place. It doesn't quite work out that way, she discovers as she "rotates" through one roommate after another in an apartment on West 100th Street, then moves to her own apartment. And then—improbably, after writing and selling a novel about a girl who moves to a small town in the Midwest—she relocates again, this time, to Lincoln, NE, where she settles—improbably—on a farm. But (let me be brief here) when her novel is optioned for film, she moves to Los Angeles, accompanied by her large, yak-like sheepdog, Rex, her constant and uncomplaining companion in all her moves. Then back again to Nebraska, where she actually buys a farm, and then back to Los Angeles, where—
But really, you must read this to-and-fro story for yourself, because no summary of it could be nearly as funny as Daum's manic telling of the back-and-forthness of her life. She is at her wittiest when she is making wild (but compassionate) fun of herself and the transient habits which, she says, were her "default setting," and describing the frenzied bubble of the Los Angeles real estate markets of the early 2000s.
If the memoir were just the recitation of Daum's obsession, however, it would not be anything more than a highly entertaining read. What makes this memoir truly and intensely interesting is the writer's insight into her inherited house-habiting angst and her understanding that this desire is woven deeply through our transient culture, dating back (at least) to the constant movements of pioneer families like that of Pa and Ma Ingalls, of Little House fame. Daum is by nature and nurture fickle, she says, a "house slut" who passionately loves houses, lives in them briefly, and then leaves them for other houses, when all the time what she really wants, deeply and painfully, is the perfect home, where she could be perfectly and permanently housed. Such a place would, she writes, confer on her an "I.D. badge for adulthood, for personhood even. It was the only thing that would make me desirable, credible, even human."
Daum's candid description of herself could well be the description of a large segment of the American home-buying public, collectively united in the belief that the perfect house would confer upon them the perfect life. In the early years of this century, the real estate and finance industries conspired to hype this irrational, cultish belief, ratcheting up home prices until they soared into the stratosphere. Realtors and bankers were aided and abetted by the advertising and home decorating industries: "The Home & Garden TV cable channel," Daum writes, offered "a round-the-clock infusion of house porn for wretches like me." As a result, people in search of personhood found themselves in possession of million-dollar houses with adjustable-rate mortgages. These houses quickly sank underwater, leaving their buyers stranded, bankrupt, and (presumably) unpersoned.
Daum's story has a happier ending, for she manages at last to find an almost-suitable Los Angeles bungalow that she can almost afford, one that brings her real life and her ideal life together under one roof. Never mind that it costs nearly half a million dollars, or that the garage resembles the "ruins of Pompeii" and the plumbing was installed during the Coolidge administration. She buys (wisely, on a standard thirty-year mortgage) and begins to remodel. Two years into the process, she meets a man who amiably consents to help her shop for antique drawer-pulls on their first date and eventually becomes her roommate. Now married, she is again contemplating a move—this time, for reasons that have a lasting importance to both of them: "Because the house is not our house, it's my house. It may be my home, but it's not really our home."
This is a book about one woman's lifelong game of house, but it is about also our American obsession with houses, with the dream of owning something that will transform us into the persons we dream of becoming. But as Daum says, maybe owning the perfect house (which seems so difficult to so many) is actually easy, when the "hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life."
July 7, 2011
I suspect that I liked this perfectly fluffy book so much because I probably want to be Meghan Daum's friend. It's very funny and very clever. It is the rare piece of fiction, or in this case, memoir, that can entertain me without being heavy on dialogue, which this one isn't. Instead, it's a long series of Daum's musings about her own (and by extension, our culture's) obsession with real estate and what we think it can do for us and say about us. And it is, at every turn, incredibly lucid about her own foibles and shortcomings, though obviously in hindsight. And this woman knows how to use a simile. Seriously.
My only gripe: she dismisses San Francisco (along with Carbondale, Illinois; yikes) as one of only two places where she has not fantasized about wanting to buy a home. I get that San Franciscans can be very preachy about the virtues of our city (I don't do this kind of preachiness, myself, though I do recognize it), but for real estate alone, Daum should give it another look.
My only gripe: she dismisses San Francisco (along with Carbondale, Illinois; yikes) as one of only two places where she has not fantasized about wanting to buy a home. I get that San Franciscans can be very preachy about the virtues of our city (I don't do this kind of preachiness, myself, though I do recognize it), but for real estate alone, Daum should give it another look.
June 6, 2010
"When I think back on the places I've lived, I now wonder this: I wonder if the real measure of 'home' is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating. Maybe you've never really lived there until you've thrown its broken pieces in the garbage. Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. The hard part is learning not just to be but mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home."
I have loved Meghan Daum's writing since I first read her collection of essays My Misspent Youth in 2001 when I was a worldly little editorial assistant/staff writer for The Times-Picayune. I loved her voice and her quirky observations. Here, she was more prickly, more honest. Homes are a touchy thing for me to think about given that I lost mine and since college have lived in a series of apartments that were consciously temporary---at first because home was always New Orleans, and then later because nothing would ever be home since everything can be lost in the blink of an eye. Oh and it's New York so forget owning anything ever.
I wish this book spoke more about what this final paragraph (which I've quoted above) had to say. For me, it's cooking and having my loved ones over which makes a house a home. Sharing food and drink together, laughing a lot, singing in the shower, finishing books in bed with the one you love. This book left me wanting more which is always a double-edged sword. May Daum's next book be about homes not houses.
I have loved Meghan Daum's writing since I first read her collection of essays My Misspent Youth in 2001 when I was a worldly little editorial assistant/staff writer for The Times-Picayune. I loved her voice and her quirky observations. Here, she was more prickly, more honest. Homes are a touchy thing for me to think about given that I lost mine and since college have lived in a series of apartments that were consciously temporary---at first because home was always New Orleans, and then later because nothing would ever be home since everything can be lost in the blink of an eye. Oh and it's New York so forget owning anything ever.
I wish this book spoke more about what this final paragraph (which I've quoted above) had to say. For me, it's cooking and having my loved ones over which makes a house a home. Sharing food and drink together, laughing a lot, singing in the shower, finishing books in bed with the one you love. This book left me wanting more which is always a double-edged sword. May Daum's next book be about homes not houses.
August 14, 2014
The first half, about the author's childhood and life in NYC, I found interesting. Her days in Nebraska and Los Angeles, not as much, although the points about L.A. neighborhoods were worthwhile.
The point where I started seriously losing interest hit when the author mentioned how she paid off her nearly 100K debt, and still had lots left over, from the advance on her novel. Perhaps I don't understand, but unless the book is a really hot property, after tax advances aren't that much; moreover, the book was picked up for a movie option as well. Its reviews here are mixed, to put it politely, and she seems not have had another novel published, so ... either she really wowed the publishers with her personality, or she exaggerated a bit. I mention this as I was honestly confused how she got her mortgage without a solid employment background. Something just didn't add up on the money front for me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I didn't dislike her, I didn't fully respect her either. Frustrating, because I really wanted to like this book more than I did.
The point where I started seriously losing interest hit when the author mentioned how she paid off her nearly 100K debt, and still had lots left over, from the advance on her novel. Perhaps I don't understand, but unless the book is a really hot property, after tax advances aren't that much; moreover, the book was picked up for a movie option as well. Its reviews here are mixed, to put it politely, and she seems not have had another novel published, so ... either she really wowed the publishers with her personality, or she exaggerated a bit. I mention this as I was honestly confused how she got her mortgage without a solid employment background. Something just didn't add up on the money front for me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I didn't dislike her, I didn't fully respect her either. Frustrating, because I really wanted to like this book more than I did.
February 27, 2011
I can't believe I finished this self-indulgent book. I guess I kept waiting for it to live up to its press and get better. Finally, about halfway through, I started skimming. In my opinion, it was much ado about nothing. Daum seems to have had an idea for a magazine article and somehow boringly expanded it into a book.
There was too much "inner thinking" and stream-of-consciousness writing ---- and so much of it was repetitive. I just did not care about her house yearnings and grew impatient with all of the dumb decisions she made in her life. And describing move after move after move when in college ---- boring!
What irritates me the most is that I let myself keep reading it when I had six other library books here to read! This book kept me in "stall" mode for days.
There was too much "inner thinking" and stream-of-consciousness writing ---- and so much of it was repetitive. I just did not care about her house yearnings and grew impatient with all of the dumb decisions she made in her life. And describing move after move after move when in college ---- boring!
What irritates me the most is that I let myself keep reading it when I had six other library books here to read! This book kept me in "stall" mode for days.
August 1, 2010
I can't give entirely objective reviews of Meghan Daum's books. We have too much in common. She published her essays on funding a proper post-college big city life with too many credit cards at the same time I was facing the consequences of doing the same. Those debts helped send both of us to Midwestern farmville towns, which she then wrote a novel about. We even apparently both dine on salami and red wine when the spouse isn't home and I once lived in a neighborhood where my dates could never ever find a place to park. Fortunately, this new book came out right after I closed on and moved into my own dream house, so I could relate to things but not stress over them. It also helps if you receive -- and better yet, have shopped from -- the Soft Surroundings catalog.
All that said, I didn't find much outright humor in the book. I managed a chuckle at a subprime/bubblegum analogy and the dubbing of all those horrible basic cable home makeover shows as 'shelter smut,' but that was about it. I'd call it more wry than funny. Relateable and interesting regardless though.
The personal experiences mostly set up and illustrate discussions of consumption and materialism and especially how they tie into identity, rationally or otherwise. Probably the most extreme version was an unwillingness to date while renting -- or worse, housesitting -- because it wasn't possible to present an accurate identity through any medium but interior decor. And when you do find romance, the book provides clear evidence of the importance of starting with totally new, neutral territory when first moving in together.
Additional food for thought via the downright macho pride in taking on a fixer-upper as a young single woman, to the point of exaggerating its flaws to put forth an image of self-sufficiency and spunk. And of course the conflict between what she calls the visible and invisible realms -- cosmetic improvements to a house vs structural and only having the money to address one at a time.
The style frequently reminded me of Sandra Tsing Loh, especially the 90s essays about identity via LA-area neighborhood. They have opposite downfalls, however -- inertia vs constantly moving on.
Amazing quantity of parenthetical tangents. Sometimes in every single paragraph. And there won't be many fans of the book in San Francisco. Apparently you don't have to live in Los Angeles very long at all to be drawn into the intrastate rivalry.
Minor spoiler : I actually misted over a bit when she uncovered the original-era hexagonal porcelain bathroom tiles. What IS the power of those things? It's quite real. And what is it with old money and Nova Scotia?
Quotes that particularly struck home:
"It's true that the money I've spent on plumbers and electricians and roofers and tree trimmers might ultimately have been put to better use on Hawaiian vacations while I remained an innocent renter. But the truth is that it wouldn't have really mattered. The cash would have slipped through my fingers anyway."
"Depending on where you live in the country, I know these [house prices:] might look like typos. Where, you're wondering, is the other zero? The other zero is the temperature in Nebraska five months out of the year."
"...the landing had walls that were painted a shade of pink so pale that it was almost as if early morning light were perpetually casting itself on the thick plaster and thicker woodwork." (I've never liked pink but suddenly I want pink walls.)
"And while I sometimes thought I wanted a lover so I could share this bliss with someone, the truth was that I just wanted a witness. I wanted someone to see my home, admire it, admire me, and then leave."
Encountering a house for sale that "would have been more right for me than my very own skin."
All that said, I didn't find much outright humor in the book. I managed a chuckle at a subprime/bubblegum analogy and the dubbing of all those horrible basic cable home makeover shows as 'shelter smut,' but that was about it. I'd call it more wry than funny. Relateable and interesting regardless though.
The personal experiences mostly set up and illustrate discussions of consumption and materialism and especially how they tie into identity, rationally or otherwise. Probably the most extreme version was an unwillingness to date while renting -- or worse, housesitting -- because it wasn't possible to present an accurate identity through any medium but interior decor. And when you do find romance, the book provides clear evidence of the importance of starting with totally new, neutral territory when first moving in together.
Additional food for thought via the downright macho pride in taking on a fixer-upper as a young single woman, to the point of exaggerating its flaws to put forth an image of self-sufficiency and spunk. And of course the conflict between what she calls the visible and invisible realms -- cosmetic improvements to a house vs structural and only having the money to address one at a time.
The style frequently reminded me of Sandra Tsing Loh, especially the 90s essays about identity via LA-area neighborhood. They have opposite downfalls, however -- inertia vs constantly moving on.
Amazing quantity of parenthetical tangents. Sometimes in every single paragraph. And there won't be many fans of the book in San Francisco. Apparently you don't have to live in Los Angeles very long at all to be drawn into the intrastate rivalry.
Minor spoiler : I actually misted over a bit when she uncovered the original-era hexagonal porcelain bathroom tiles. What IS the power of those things? It's quite real. And what is it with old money and Nova Scotia?
Quotes that particularly struck home:
"It's true that the money I've spent on plumbers and electricians and roofers and tree trimmers might ultimately have been put to better use on Hawaiian vacations while I remained an innocent renter. But the truth is that it wouldn't have really mattered. The cash would have slipped through my fingers anyway."
"Depending on where you live in the country, I know these [house prices:] might look like typos. Where, you're wondering, is the other zero? The other zero is the temperature in Nebraska five months out of the year."
"...the landing had walls that were painted a shade of pink so pale that it was almost as if early morning light were perpetually casting itself on the thick plaster and thicker woodwork." (I've never liked pink but suddenly I want pink walls.)
"And while I sometimes thought I wanted a lover so I could share this bliss with someone, the truth was that I just wanted a witness. I wanted someone to see my home, admire it, admire me, and then leave."
Encountering a house for sale that "would have been more right for me than my very own skin."
May 23, 2010
In "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House," Meghan Daum recounts her search for a living space that would allow her to feel at home. In part, she declares, that quest has to do with houses, "ones I've lived in and ones I haven't, ones I've lusted for, ones I've reviled, ones I've left too soon, and ones where I've found myself stuck, chained to my own radiator by the tethers of my own stupid decisions." Yet as she moves in and out of temporary residences, never quite coming across the one that would complete her, she finds herself "hungry to the point of weakness for something that would root me to the earth." Eventually, she does discover such a house and tries to transform it into a dream home, at which point her story begins to read like an illustration of the adage that when God wants a laugh, he answers our prayers.
Setting obviously plays a large role in the book, and Daum offers plenty of dwelling details without letting things degenerate into an episode of "Trading Spaces." Whether a Vassar dorm room, a prewar apartment on the Upper West Side, a Nebraska farmhouse or an Echo Park house on a hill, each place she has lived is richly drawn. Daum, a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, deftly captures the emotions of relocation: "the suspension of disbelief required to pull out of a driveway that is no longer yours, coast through a neighborhood that will soon no longer be home, and pass … the landmarks that … have long been the only thing standing between disorientation and sweet familiarity. No one ever talks about the importance of staring straight ahead while making this exit.… Like breaking up with a lover, you need to be as gracious as possible, but even more so you just need to walk out."
Much of "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House" takes place when Daum is single, but she has no intention of succumbing to "the tragedy of the single woman who won't buy decent furniture because she's waiting to get married." Instead, she takes the dangerously clichéd premises that surround a single woman looking to buy a house and carefully prunes away the same old stories. Some of what she confronts, however, is fascinating in its archaism. When her house is in escrow, she is required to sign half the forms as "Meghan Daum, an unmarried woman."
Still, the metaphor of romance makes perfect sense in the context of real estate. "Moving, like chocolate and sunshine," Daum writes, "stirs up many of the same chemicals you ostensibly produce when you're in love.… Like a new lover, a new house opens a floodgate of anticipation and trepidation and terrifying expectations fused with dreamy distractions." Beyond these particulars, Daum captures the now-gone moment when real estate became a national obsession: "The whole world, or at least the whole country, was buying real estate and melting it down to liquid form and then injecting it into veins." She chronicles the shared madness of those who could only take breaks from watching HGTV to discuss closing costs.
At times, "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House" reads a bit like an addiction memoir. Like many addictive tendencies, Daum's has roots in childhood. She describes her family as possessed by "a chronic, lulling sensation of being aboard a train that was perpetually two stops away from the destination we had in mind for ourselves," always contemplating "what possibilities for happiness might lie at the destination point of a moving van."
As she moves from coast to coast and in between, Daum is consistently relatable. In the end, she settles in Los Angeles, which is, she explains, "nothing if not the geographical equivalent of Baby Bear's porridge: not too cold, not too hot, but, rather, a study in the unsung pleasures of lukewarm." Her descriptions of the neighborhoods north of downtown — Silver Lake, Echo Park, Angelino Heights — are meticulous enough to play Name That Intersection, and the details of her house-hunting will please local readers.
There's a sense that once a perfect home is established, we suddenly become functional adults. "I knew it wasn't just a house I was after," Daum writes, "but, rather, proof of my existence. It was the only thing that would make me desirable, credible, even human." As she moves from house-lusting to house-buying, and, shortly thereafter, to sharing a home with a partner, she struggles with the idea that she doesn't want to live with someone so much as to have a witness to the beauty of her home. Daum's discomfort with coming around to the reality of shared space is honest and endearing and somehow captured in this moment. Her boyfriend moves in and they put the spare mattress out on the lawn for pick-up, in the same 24-hour period that the Google Earth satellite photographs her home for virtual eternity.
Originally reviewed for the LA Times - May 9, 2010
Setting obviously plays a large role in the book, and Daum offers plenty of dwelling details without letting things degenerate into an episode of "Trading Spaces." Whether a Vassar dorm room, a prewar apartment on the Upper West Side, a Nebraska farmhouse or an Echo Park house on a hill, each place she has lived is richly drawn. Daum, a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, deftly captures the emotions of relocation: "the suspension of disbelief required to pull out of a driveway that is no longer yours, coast through a neighborhood that will soon no longer be home, and pass … the landmarks that … have long been the only thing standing between disorientation and sweet familiarity. No one ever talks about the importance of staring straight ahead while making this exit.… Like breaking up with a lover, you need to be as gracious as possible, but even more so you just need to walk out."
Much of "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House" takes place when Daum is single, but she has no intention of succumbing to "the tragedy of the single woman who won't buy decent furniture because she's waiting to get married." Instead, she takes the dangerously clichéd premises that surround a single woman looking to buy a house and carefully prunes away the same old stories. Some of what she confronts, however, is fascinating in its archaism. When her house is in escrow, she is required to sign half the forms as "Meghan Daum, an unmarried woman."
Still, the metaphor of romance makes perfect sense in the context of real estate. "Moving, like chocolate and sunshine," Daum writes, "stirs up many of the same chemicals you ostensibly produce when you're in love.… Like a new lover, a new house opens a floodgate of anticipation and trepidation and terrifying expectations fused with dreamy distractions." Beyond these particulars, Daum captures the now-gone moment when real estate became a national obsession: "The whole world, or at least the whole country, was buying real estate and melting it down to liquid form and then injecting it into veins." She chronicles the shared madness of those who could only take breaks from watching HGTV to discuss closing costs.
At times, "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House" reads a bit like an addiction memoir. Like many addictive tendencies, Daum's has roots in childhood. She describes her family as possessed by "a chronic, lulling sensation of being aboard a train that was perpetually two stops away from the destination we had in mind for ourselves," always contemplating "what possibilities for happiness might lie at the destination point of a moving van."
As she moves from coast to coast and in between, Daum is consistently relatable. In the end, she settles in Los Angeles, which is, she explains, "nothing if not the geographical equivalent of Baby Bear's porridge: not too cold, not too hot, but, rather, a study in the unsung pleasures of lukewarm." Her descriptions of the neighborhoods north of downtown — Silver Lake, Echo Park, Angelino Heights — are meticulous enough to play Name That Intersection, and the details of her house-hunting will please local readers.
There's a sense that once a perfect home is established, we suddenly become functional adults. "I knew it wasn't just a house I was after," Daum writes, "but, rather, proof of my existence. It was the only thing that would make me desirable, credible, even human." As she moves from house-lusting to house-buying, and, shortly thereafter, to sharing a home with a partner, she struggles with the idea that she doesn't want to live with someone so much as to have a witness to the beauty of her home. Daum's discomfort with coming around to the reality of shared space is honest and endearing and somehow captured in this moment. Her boyfriend moves in and they put the spare mattress out on the lawn for pick-up, in the same 24-hour period that the Google Earth satellite photographs her home for virtual eternity.
Originally reviewed for the LA Times - May 9, 2010
May 9, 2012
Originally published http://mommydomchronicles.blogspot.co...
I have a confession to make: Meghan and I grew up together. We graduated high school together, and were on the newspaper and yearbook together. For a great number of years she had the writing career I had coveted.
While I am not world famous, or a best seller, or what not, I realized that there was a lot more to my life than hers.
For one thing, I met my true love pretty darn early in my life. He's been sweeping me off my feet since 1993. If you are counting folks, that's 18 years. That's a dang long time for two people to be staring across a table at each other. But we do, and still continue to do so.
Another thing, is I am settled. I am happy with my life, for the most part. Sure, I'd love to lose some weight. I'd love to complete a to do list. I'd love to do a lot of things but if I don't (and I usually don't), its ok.
I have an amazing life. I may not have gone to Vassar or write for the LA Times, but I am a rockstar to two very important people in my life.
I have to admit, I just started the book, and I am not far enough into to formulate an opinion. But, from what I have gathered, I know I made the right choices. Everything that has happened in my life has brought me to this very spot, for a very specific reason. I may not know what it is at the time, but even the littlest choice has significant effect for me. Call it my own personal butterfly effect.
I have realized that a choice to go out with a friend one evening led me to meeting my husband.
I have realized that if it was not our struggle with infertility, I would never have been a foster parent.
Or an adoptive parent.
Or a parent, period.
I have realized that if it wasn't for a bully chasing me when I was 7, I would never have run into Rev. Anderson and the shortcut through his backyard. It also led me to being an Episcopalian.
I have realized that it took my father in law dying for us to start living our lives.
There are so many blessings that have come out of something so small, so minor that have gone on to change my life.
Everyday is a winding road.
And my life is perfect.
I have a confession to make: Meghan and I grew up together. We graduated high school together, and were on the newspaper and yearbook together. For a great number of years she had the writing career I had coveted.
While I am not world famous, or a best seller, or what not, I realized that there was a lot more to my life than hers.
For one thing, I met my true love pretty darn early in my life. He's been sweeping me off my feet since 1993. If you are counting folks, that's 18 years. That's a dang long time for two people to be staring across a table at each other. But we do, and still continue to do so.
Another thing, is I am settled. I am happy with my life, for the most part. Sure, I'd love to lose some weight. I'd love to complete a to do list. I'd love to do a lot of things but if I don't (and I usually don't), its ok.
I have an amazing life. I may not have gone to Vassar or write for the LA Times, but I am a rockstar to two very important people in my life.
I have to admit, I just started the book, and I am not far enough into to formulate an opinion. But, from what I have gathered, I know I made the right choices. Everything that has happened in my life has brought me to this very spot, for a very specific reason. I may not know what it is at the time, but even the littlest choice has significant effect for me. Call it my own personal butterfly effect.
I have realized that a choice to go out with a friend one evening led me to meeting my husband.
I have realized that if it was not our struggle with infertility, I would never have been a foster parent.
Or an adoptive parent.
Or a parent, period.
I have realized that if it wasn't for a bully chasing me when I was 7, I would never have run into Rev. Anderson and the shortcut through his backyard. It also led me to being an Episcopalian.
I have realized that it took my father in law dying for us to start living our lives.
There are so many blessings that have come out of something so small, so minor that have gone on to change my life.
Everyday is a winding road.
And my life is perfect.
April 20, 2015
Meghan Daum wrote the exact book I wanted/needed to read right now! Though I'm not shopping for real estate, I am about to leave a city (the only city besides Carbondale, Illinois, that in the book she disparages) for another city (my fourth in less than ten adult years, not counting college) for no better reason than that, from a distance, this one 'seems more me' and is allegedly somewhere 'I could see myself staying for a while.' I envision the perfect rental bungalow there, though I don’t know that it exists and as of now have no means to procure such a luxurious amount of personal space. But only once my cat has a cat door, and I have room for a garden, and everything around me is cute and self-selected and vintagey, will I be whole. Also Daum’s writing is fantastic, smooth, sharp and funny. I read this in two days, reluctantly, as I would have preferred to finish it on the first sitting.
January 19, 2012
I enjoyed this book, even though I found the author's attitudes sometimes appalling, sometimes a little too close to home. Meghan Daum, a columnist for the LA Times and a commentator on NPR, writes in exhaustive detail about her many moves and her real estate obsession. I heard her interviewed around the time the book came out, so I knew the gist of the story. As a fellow Gen Xer and cross-country mover, I can relate to the idea that for this generation, where you live says a lot about who you are.
The book runs a little long, even though it is focused exclusively on real estate and moving matters. Although the book contains a wonderful character study of the author's mother, it would've been nice to hear a few more personal details about the author, her friends and other family members. Still, there are lots of gems of insight sprinkled throughout the book as the author begins to come to grips with her obsessions and insecurities and eventually her life.
The book runs a little long, even though it is focused exclusively on real estate and moving matters. Although the book contains a wonderful character study of the author's mother, it would've been nice to hear a few more personal details about the author, her friends and other family members. Still, there are lots of gems of insight sprinkled throughout the book as the author begins to come to grips with her obsessions and insecurities and eventually her life.
July 11, 2010
Daum writes about her escapades as a home shopper and home buyer and why that hardly ever leads to her being a home owner. The premise is interesting - why do so many of us think that if we lived in the right abode, the rest of our life would fall into place? How do the influences of where our parents chose to live (and not live), along with all those perfect happy families from TVLand shape what where we think we will thrive? Unfortunately, Daum never goes much deeper than "I discovered I was I shopper, not a buyer" to explain why she moves dozens of times in less than ten years. She's a funny writer, but don't look to this book for anything beyond a few smiles.
July 18, 2017
I love how clear, precise, and relentlessly introspective Daum is. She is wonderfully willing to see and call herself on her weaknesses. Her clarity about the erroneous thinking that led her to make certain decisions is always hilarious. I haven't had quite her same bug (or means) to buy real estate, but I have certainly projected fantasies of myself in different iterations onto imagined cities, towns, apartments and lives.
May 14, 2010
Well-written, but boring. I'd like to read something by her that was a little deeper. I felt like she was going through the motions, writing this self-examination of houses lived in and desired. But I don't think she learned anything.
Read
March 1, 2018She's very witty--and at times I laughed out loud. Other times, I cringed because she also comes across at times like the mean girl in high school that I wouldn't want to hang out with. Toward the middle the book sags, but I'm glad I finished it because the last 40 pages are a good payoff.
November 4, 2019
Walt Whitman once said, "I am large, I contain multitudes," which is to say that I have made many bad shopping decisions because one of the multitudes thought that white cargo pants would be something I'd look good in. Unfortunately, I can't fire my multitudes, and neither can Meghan Daum.
As she details in this memoir about the intersection of domiciles and self esteem, her multitudes have led her into some dicey real estate decisions, which range from terrible, prototypical New York apartments to farmhouses in Nebraska and ended with a dump of a house in Los Angeles. If you're into real estate like I am, you'll enjoy the descriptions of property and neighborhoods although they can get a little long-winded. Interspersed is a narrative of growing up and getting married.
Daum has a true Gen X voice: wry and self-effacing. I like it, but the subject matter is a little thin for the length.
As she details in this memoir about the intersection of domiciles and self esteem, her multitudes have led her into some dicey real estate decisions, which range from terrible, prototypical New York apartments to farmhouses in Nebraska and ended with a dump of a house in Los Angeles. If you're into real estate like I am, you'll enjoy the descriptions of property and neighborhoods although they can get a little long-winded. Interspersed is a narrative of growing up and getting married.
Daum has a true Gen X voice: wry and self-effacing. I like it, but the subject matter is a little thin for the length.
August 16, 2020
Perhaps because I don’t have a real estate obsession a lot of the book was lost on me because I couldn’t understand her fixation. Still a very open and honest account of her life and how moving, real estate and always trying to find the next house played out in her life.
June 20, 2010
In the early 2000s, Meghan Daum did something totally unprecedented. She busted past a bunch of dead male authors with flapper fetishes and Margaret Atwood to land a spot in my Top 5 Favorite Books of All Time list with her collection of contemporary essays: "My Misspent Youth."
It's not a Pulitzer Prize-winning mix; There is a good chance you've never heard of it. But is a real gem, with pieces on the financial woes of residual college tuition and renting in New York City on a freelance writer's income, and another memorable bit where she likens the idea of carpeting to a gross kid from elementary school. She's funny, the way you want funny to be: subtle, conversational, doled out in moderation. And she was recognizable. It wasn't my life she was writing about, but it was a life I recognized.
[Unfortunately she followed this with fiction that smacked dangerously close to her own life: Woman ditches out on the fast lane, lands in Lincoln, Neb., meets a dude in a flannel shirt and lives in an old farmhouse. And in the process learns a thing or two about love. It was a total three-star meh-fest.]
Daum is back doing what should be doing, conversational nonfiction writing, with what is ultimately an essay-ish love letter to house shopping and the places where she has lived, "Life Would be Perfect If I Live in that House."
Daum's fascination with all-things-home gets an organic start, with her mother dragging her to open houses on the weekends. When she goes off to college, she averages more than one move per school-year: Dorm rooms, attics, summer apartments in the city. She follows a hankering for space to Nebraska and falls in love with old farmhouses. Then it's off to Los Angeles, back to Nebraska, Los Angeles again. Rentals, dog-sitting gigs, and eventual ownership.
In a world filled with books about lipstick, high heels, and vampires, Daum's motivation is solely for a fixer-upper that she can mold into something that totally mirrors who she is. She cared less about her own appearance, she admits, that the appearance of the space where she was living. At one point she postpones a second date until she moves into her new place. And sometimes this causes a crisis of identity:
"It was the dirty truth about my relentless search for 'domestic integrity.' It was this awful fact: you cannot pursue authenticity at the same time you are pursuing fabulousness. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot be the down-home farm girl and the queen of lower Fifth Avenue at the same time. You cannot be Maggie O'Connell (the floatplane-piloting, pixie-haircut-sporting, flannel-shirt-wearing cutie from 'Northern Exposure') and also Carrie Bradshaw from 'Sex and the City.' You cannot be Dorothy Parker and also Willa Cather. To attempt to be both of these things is to be not only neither, but in fact nothing.
It is a niche topic, a different sort of addiction memoir, and very much a risk. If I didn't know Meghan Daum's writing, I'm not sure this book would ever leap off the shelf and into my hot hands. But it did, and Daum, for my money, remains one of the best voices in modern essay writing.
It's not a Pulitzer Prize-winning mix; There is a good chance you've never heard of it. But is a real gem, with pieces on the financial woes of residual college tuition and renting in New York City on a freelance writer's income, and another memorable bit where she likens the idea of carpeting to a gross kid from elementary school. She's funny, the way you want funny to be: subtle, conversational, doled out in moderation. And she was recognizable. It wasn't my life she was writing about, but it was a life I recognized.
[Unfortunately she followed this with fiction that smacked dangerously close to her own life: Woman ditches out on the fast lane, lands in Lincoln, Neb., meets a dude in a flannel shirt and lives in an old farmhouse. And in the process learns a thing or two about love. It was a total three-star meh-fest.]
Daum is back doing what should be doing, conversational nonfiction writing, with what is ultimately an essay-ish love letter to house shopping and the places where she has lived, "Life Would be Perfect If I Live in that House."
Daum's fascination with all-things-home gets an organic start, with her mother dragging her to open houses on the weekends. When she goes off to college, she averages more than one move per school-year: Dorm rooms, attics, summer apartments in the city. She follows a hankering for space to Nebraska and falls in love with old farmhouses. Then it's off to Los Angeles, back to Nebraska, Los Angeles again. Rentals, dog-sitting gigs, and eventual ownership.
In a world filled with books about lipstick, high heels, and vampires, Daum's motivation is solely for a fixer-upper that she can mold into something that totally mirrors who she is. She cared less about her own appearance, she admits, that the appearance of the space where she was living. At one point she postpones a second date until she moves into her new place. And sometimes this causes a crisis of identity:
"It was the dirty truth about my relentless search for 'domestic integrity.' It was this awful fact: you cannot pursue authenticity at the same time you are pursuing fabulousness. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot be the down-home farm girl and the queen of lower Fifth Avenue at the same time. You cannot be Maggie O'Connell (the floatplane-piloting, pixie-haircut-sporting, flannel-shirt-wearing cutie from 'Northern Exposure') and also Carrie Bradshaw from 'Sex and the City.' You cannot be Dorothy Parker and also Willa Cather. To attempt to be both of these things is to be not only neither, but in fact nothing.
It is a niche topic, a different sort of addiction memoir, and very much a risk. If I didn't know Meghan Daum's writing, I'm not sure this book would ever leap off the shelf and into my hot hands. But it did, and Daum, for my money, remains one of the best voices in modern essay writing.
June 2, 2015
Meghan Daum, a regular columnist for the LA Times, categorizes herself as an essayist. That seems to be her strong suit and she proves it in this book about her relentless pursuit of that sublime living space, that place where everything is finally perfect and her restless soul finally finds its home. This title pulled me in also because I come from a family that is all about ‘houses’....buying them, building them, decorating them, continuously going to home shows for more ‘ideas’, and talking about them. Not me, that is, but my family.
Daum says that her “housing compulsions are a direct descendent of my mother’s efforts to cope with the identity confusion that plagued our immediate family like a skin rash” and states that her mother had a “hardwired real estate obsession". After reading this book, it is obvious that she passed this obsession on to her daughter. Beginning with her mother’s background in Carbondale, Illinois, she chronicles events as they hop-skipped from one home to another around the country until they ended up in Ridgewood, NJ, cozily close to New York City, the shining goal. Meghan attended Vassar and restlessly moved to different rooms nearly every semester. Her quest for the perfect place after graduation led her through various New York City apartments, then out to Lincoln, Nebraska where she sought a quaint ‘little house on the prairie’. Eventually making her way to California, she moved from apartment to apartment because “moving, like chocolate and sunshine, stirs up many of the same chemicals you ostensibly produce when you’re in love”. She changed living spaces like she changed clothes. Eventually she impulsively bought her first house.
Because Daum is such a good writer, all of this flurry of constant moving is not only dizzying, but highly entertaining. She will certainly resonate with women with a strong nesting instinct who have an idea in their heads of that 'perfect’ house. It is possible to let your trappings define you and it is often this that drives us to greater and greater housing heights. If our house is grand and perfect, then perhaps we, too, will be grand and perfect. Daum ends this book by wondering if “ the real measure of “home” is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating.” I get the feeling that she’s still at it, though!
Daum says that her “housing compulsions are a direct descendent of my mother’s efforts to cope with the identity confusion that plagued our immediate family like a skin rash” and states that her mother had a “hardwired real estate obsession". After reading this book, it is obvious that she passed this obsession on to her daughter. Beginning with her mother’s background in Carbondale, Illinois, she chronicles events as they hop-skipped from one home to another around the country until they ended up in Ridgewood, NJ, cozily close to New York City, the shining goal. Meghan attended Vassar and restlessly moved to different rooms nearly every semester. Her quest for the perfect place after graduation led her through various New York City apartments, then out to Lincoln, Nebraska where she sought a quaint ‘little house on the prairie’. Eventually making her way to California, she moved from apartment to apartment because “moving, like chocolate and sunshine, stirs up many of the same chemicals you ostensibly produce when you’re in love”. She changed living spaces like she changed clothes. Eventually she impulsively bought her first house.
Because Daum is such a good writer, all of this flurry of constant moving is not only dizzying, but highly entertaining. She will certainly resonate with women with a strong nesting instinct who have an idea in their heads of that 'perfect’ house. It is possible to let your trappings define you and it is often this that drives us to greater and greater housing heights. If our house is grand and perfect, then perhaps we, too, will be grand and perfect. Daum ends this book by wondering if “ the real measure of “home” is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating.” I get the feeling that she’s still at it, though!
July 19, 2010
I loved the title of this book! I too, have moved a lot....although I lived in the same house the first 18 years of my life, in my five years of college I lived in two dormrooms and six apartments, with a total of more than 15 roommates. In my mid-twenties I had five more roommates, two apartments and two townhomes. I moved to Chicago in my late 20's, and in my two years there I lived in an apartment, and then bought a house (all with the same person). Then it was off for a two-year stint in Dallas (one short-term corporate apartment, one owned house - both with the same person - and two apartments, both of which I lived in alone). Then I got married, and together my husband & I have spent four years in Minneapolis (one short-term corporate apartment, then a purchased home), then four years in Austin (one owned house). I've now been in the San Diego area for three years (two rented houses) and I am getting itchy again. The Denver area is looking good. :)
So I understand Meghan's wanderlust, and I totally get going from one end of the country to another, with your friends thinking you are nuts. I'm also willing to bet she ends up back in Lincoln, as that's the one place she chose for herself.
The book was well-written in parts, but other parts were too rambling for me, particularly her parents' decision in her youth. I liked the ending, and the person Meghan ended up being, and I think basing her story on "homes" is a clever twist, particuarly in this point in history. I would have liked more detail on her current pov, given the housing situation in CA these days, but overall, I think this is a worthwhile read.
So I understand Meghan's wanderlust, and I totally get going from one end of the country to another, with your friends thinking you are nuts. I'm also willing to bet she ends up back in Lincoln, as that's the one place she chose for herself.
The book was well-written in parts, but other parts were too rambling for me, particularly her parents' decision in her youth. I liked the ending, and the person Meghan ended up being, and I think basing her story on "homes" is a clever twist, particuarly in this point in history. I would have liked more detail on her current pov, given the housing situation in CA these days, but overall, I think this is a worthwhile read.
January 27, 2015
I was thinking this would be right up my alley since in our house we watch a ton of House Hunters and we love to drive through pretty neighborhoods "just looking" and dreaming out loud. Not sure what happened here. I found the prologue humorous and appealing but every other chapter of this book felt like a whole lotta nothing going on. I was anticipating this book to be a humorous and maybe sometimes touching look at her real estate obsession, her experiences, maybe some commentary on what seems to drive our collective impulses as a whole, why we seem to obsess over the things we do. Much of that kind of thing was lacking here. Aside from the prologue, I found virtually nothing that made me laugh or even smirk and by the end, I didn't really take away much of anything except a headache from all the (what seemed like) mindless rambling and ongoing story of "let's repeat the same mistakes a million times and never get a clue from any of it".
January 10, 2013
My family moved constantly when I growing up, so I thought this was an interesting look at how always being on the move as a child affects you as an adult. I could identify with her crazy-making, overwhelming desire to put down roots even as she undermined herself by moving all the time. This is the only book I've come across that looks at the 'something better awaits me in the next city' mindset that seeps into you when you are dragged around as a child and end up being an adult who's not really 'from' anywhere. And how you end up not being able to settle down, even though you really want to (kind of). This book focuses more on her real estate obsession, but I most enjoyed the parts that touched on the real reasons for her constant wanderlust. I'm just amazed she had so few crazy roommates. Also, important bit: she's very funny!
October 26, 2010
I might actually give this book three and a half stars; but I tipped over to the extra whole star (not only because Goodreads makes me round my stars) but because this was the right book at the right time for me, as I spend 99% of my time mindf*&(ing my real estate situation.
I always liked Daum as a columnist, but haven't loved her previous books. This one, though, resonated with me. I appreciated that although it is a memoir, she more than occasionally admits that she can't remember exactly what happened or what was said at a particular time.
A great book to read when you feel like your life is all about real estate. And I never realized that I wasn't the only one to have that "extra room" dream. Fascinating!
I always liked Daum as a columnist, but haven't loved her previous books. This one, though, resonated with me. I appreciated that although it is a memoir, she more than occasionally admits that she can't remember exactly what happened or what was said at a particular time.
A great book to read when you feel like your life is all about real estate. And I never realized that I wasn't the only one to have that "extra room" dream. Fascinating!
December 3, 2011
The title of this witty, funny, insightful memoir popped right out at me in the bookstore. Hasn't everyone fantasized about how a new, better house would open the door to a happier life that seems just out of reach? Daum captures that but explores how those dreams took over her life. She engagingly delves into the "house as metaphor" theme, deceptively eschewing psychological examination: "Like growing up or honestly falling in and out of love, the journey from sane to not entirely sane traverses an invisible plain. You can no more know how or when you got better than know or when you came unglued in the first place." In the end, her story is an explanation of that journey, lightly delivered, and one that hit "home" for me.
June 23, 2012
I enjoy surfing through home listings, with no intention of buying a house anytime soon, so I thought this would be a book that I would really enjoy. NOPE! Much of the book is whining, then the author somehow falls into a house remodel induced depression - yet still manages to make her $2k/month mortgage payment even though she can't work or do anything other than obsess about the house she now hates. Just one poorly thought out decision after another. And then she falls in love though! So all is well. I guess I "hate read" to the end of this book.
October 14, 2011
An enjoyable outing from Megham Daum! I liked her style and I liked being inside her head, though a bit more connection between her tale and broader social problems (i.e., the mass real estate hysteria and why that was) would have been good.
Megham Daum spoke at Salem College earlier this week, and now her memoir is the first library book I've checked out via Kindle! Time to get reading....
Megham Daum spoke at Salem College earlier this week, and now her memoir is the first library book I've checked out via Kindle! Time to get reading....
June 1, 2010
A hilarious look at the desire and purchase of a home. The author recounts her obsession with houses and her final purchase - and the desire to immediately move. Anyone who loves driving around, looking at homes and thinking "maybe" about them should read this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
July 25, 2012
Daum can get a bit annoying with her grass is always greener in the other house obsessions, but overall the book is humorous and should prove interesting to anyone who enjoys the hunt for a house more than the actual purchase.
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November 16, 2011I thought this would be more funny and lighthearted and less gripey. Definitely not feeling it.
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